Part 14

5. The establishment of fixed salaries for the professors, so that they may no longer have any pecuniary interest in the size of their classes.

[Footnote 45: Higher Medical Education. The True Interest of the Public and of the Profession. By William Pepper, M. D., LL. D. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1894.]

It was a source of gratification to Dr. Pepper that he lived to see all these reforms in medical education adopted. On the extension of the medical course to four years he subscribed $50,000 toward a permanent endowment of $250,000. As early as 1871 he began to urge the establishment of a university hospital, the subject being first discussed in a conversation with Dr. H. C. Wood and Dr. William F. Norris. An appeal was made to the public, and Dr. Pepper was made chairman of a finance committee. By May, 1872, a splendid site and $350,000 for building and endowment had been secured. Dr. Pepper was selected as chairman of the building committee, and work on the hospital was pushed so rapidly that it was ready for patients on July 15, 1874.

When Dr. Charles J. Stillé resigned the provostship of the university in 1881, Dr. Pepper was elected as his successor. The executive abilities which he had displayed in connection with the founding of the new hospital made him the natural choice of the trustees. Although his private practice had increased to immense proportions, besides being occupied with his duties as a clinical professor, Dr. Pepper accepted the provostship. To the duties of this office he devoted the best years of his life. The extent of his practice and the demands made upon his time by the university would have appalled an ordinary man, but his capacity for labor appeared to be without limit, his working day often exceeding eighteen hours. His administration was characterized by the unification of the various schools of the university, besides the founding and equipment of several new departments. In one of his annual reports Dr. Pepper defined the broad policy of the university in the following appropriate language: "The university is truly the voluntary association of all persons and of all agencies who wish to unite in work for the elevation of society by the pursuit and diffusion of truth."[46] In other words, Dr. Pepper regarded the functions of the university as not simply an institution of instruction, but also of research. To this end every effort was made to open up new fields of investigation and to widen the scope of the university. During his provostship thirteen new buildings were erected, and the following departments, or schools, were organized:

1. The Department of Finance and Economy. 2. The Department of Philosophy. 3. The Department of Veterinary Medicine. 4. The Department of Biology. 5. The Department of Physical Education. 6. The Department of Archæology and Paleontology. 7. The Department of Hygiene. 8. The Graduate Department for Women. 9. The School of Architecture. 10. The School for Nurses in the University Hospital. 11. The Veterinary Hospital. 12. The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology.

[Footnote 46: Report of the Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, from October, 1892, to June, 1894. Philadelphia, 1894.]

Dr. Pepper took particular interest in the Department of Archæology and Paleontology connected with the university. For a number of years he was president of its board of trustees, while it was largely through his efforts that the Babylonian Exploration Fund was formed.[47] It was Dr. Pepper's ambition to have at the university well-equipped laboratories that would offer an opportunity for original investigation in medical science. The establishment of the Laboratory of Hygiene, in 1892, was the first step in this direction, soon to be followed by Dr. Pepper's gift of the Laboratory of Clinical Medicine. This laboratory was founded in memory of his father, the late Dr. William Pepper. The gift is unique in that it is made for the purpose of promoting and stimulating original research, and improving the methods of diagnosing and treating the diseases of human beings. Another field of work in the laboratory is that of giving advanced and special instruction to men who have already obtained the degree of Doctor of Medicine. At the opening of the laboratory in 1895 Dr. William H. Welch, of Johns Hopkins University, said, "To the small number of existing clinical laboratories the William Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine is a most notable addition, being the first laboratory of the kind in this country, and it is not surpassed by any in foreign countries."[48]

[Footnote 47: See the article on Science at the University of Pennsylvania, in Popular Science Monthly for August, 1896.]

[Footnote 48: Proceedings at the Opening of the William Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine, December 4, 1895. Philadelphia, 1895.]

Dr. Pepper realized more and more every year that the vast extent of the university interests demanded the undivided activity of its head. In 1894 he resigned the office of provost, stating at the time that, as it became necessary for him to choose between administration work and medical science, his devotion to the latter determined his choice. His administration was an eventful one, during which the university evolved from a group of disconnected schools to a great academic body. In 1881 its property in land amounted to fifteen acres, while in 1894 it controlled fifty-two acres in a continuous tract. In 1881 the university property was valued at $1,600,000; in 1894 it exceeded $5,000,000. The teaching force in 1881 numbered 88 and the students in all departments 981; in 1894 the former were 268, and the attendance had reached 2,180, representing every State in the Union, as well as thirty-eight foreign countries.

Dr. Pepper became well known as an author on medical subjects. He founded the Philadelphia Medical Times, and was its editor for two years. In 1885 he edited a System of Medicine by American Authors, a work that has been considered a leading authority on medical subjects. He also edited a book of medical practice by American authors, and, with Dr. J. F. Meigs, issued a work on Diseases of Children. He was Medical Director of the Centennial Exposition in 1876, and for his services he received from the King of Sweden the decoration of Knight Commander of the Order of St. Olaf.

Dr. Pepper showed an unbounded interest in behalf of any movement that would benefit the community in general. He was one of the first to realize the advantage that would accrue to Philadelphia should she become a museum center. The Philadelphia Commercial Museum was established in October, 1893, with Dr. Pepper as president of the board of trustees. The old offices of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company were leased, and exhibits were secured from the Latin-American countries, Africa, Australia, Japan, and India, forming the largest permanent collection of raw products in existence. Referring to the great value of the museum, Dr. Pepper spoke as follows in his address of welcome at the first annual meeting of the advisory board:

"It would seem clear, however, that no method of studying industries and commerce can be scientific and complete which does not include the museum idea as now comprehended. The museum aims to teach by object lesson the story of the world, past and present. The Biological Museum presents the objects of human and comparative anatomy, arranged scientifically and labeled so fully as to constitute the best text-book for the study of those subjects. The Museum of Natural History does the same in its field. The Museum of Archæology shows the progress of the race from the most archaic times, the different types of human beings, their mode of living, their forms of worship, their games, their weapons, their implements, the natural products which they used for subsistence, in their industries, and in their arts, the objects of manufacture or of art which they produced, and the manner in which they disposed of their dead.

"The natural products and manufactured articles, which constitute the material of commerce, come necessarily into such a scheme, and the long-looked-for opportunity of establishing a commercial museum upon a truly scientific basis presented itself when, at the close of the Columbian Exposition at Chicago, it was possible, through the enlightened liberality of the municipal authorities of Philadelphia and the invaluable services of Prof. W. P. Wilson, to secure vast collections of commercial material, which was so liberally donated to the Philadelphia museums by nearly all the foreign countries of the globe."

It was Dr. Pepper's idea to have the University Museum and the Commercial Museum situated near each other, on the plan of the South Kensington Museum. To this end the City Councils, in 1896, passed an ordinance giving over to the trustees of the Commercial Museum sixteen acres of land for the erection of suitable buildings. When all the plans are carried out the city will have unrivaled facilities for the study of civilization, past and present.

One of the most enduring monuments to Dr. Pepper's zeal and generosity is the Free Library of Philadelphia. In 1889 his uncle, George S. Pepper, bequeathed the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars "to the trustees of such Free Library which may be established in the city of Philadelphia." From the beginning Dr. Pepper took a warm interest in the Free Library movement. It was under his leadership that the library was organized, and he was made the first president of its board of trustees. Speaking of his activity in this direction, the librarian, Mr. John Thomson, said: "No detail was too small for his personal attention. No plan for its future growth was too large for his ambitious hope of both public and private support. The remarkable and rapid increase in the circulation of the Free Library, the multiplication of its branches, the organization of all its departments on a broad and generous plan, his success in enlisting a large number of able fellow-workers, his clear, plain statements to Councils and the city authorities, his activity in securing needed legislation at Harrisburg, were some of the results of that intelligent energy which enabled him to do so much and to do it so well." The bequest of the Pepper family has been supplemented by ample appropriations by the City Councils, and the Free Library is now one of the most important institutions in Philadelphia. The library at present has twelve flourishing branches, while the combined circulation of the system for the year 1898 was 1,738,950 volumes.

Dr. Pepper was also connected with many scientific bodies. He was Vice-President of the American Philosophical Society, and President of the first Pan-American Medical Congress in 1893. He was a Fellow of the College of Physicians; President of the Philadelphia Pathological Society from 1873 to 1876; Director of the Biological Section, Academy of Natural Sciences; President, in 1886, of the American Climatological Association; President of the Foulke and Long Institute for Orphan Girls; President of the First Sanitary Convention of Pennsylvania; and in 1882 he was a member of the Assay Commission of the United States Mint. He received the degree of LL. D. from Lafayette College in 1881, and from the University of Pennsylvania in 1893.

In 1873 Dr. Pepper married Miss Frances Sargeant Perry, a lineal descendant of Benjamin Franklin, and a granddaughter of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. Four sons were born, of whom three survive--Dr. William Pepper, Jr., Benjamin Franklin Pepper, and Oliver Hazard Perry Pepper. Failing in health, Dr. Pepper went to California early in the summer of 1898, where he died of heart disease on July 28th of that year. His body reached Philadelphia on August 6th. Funeral services were held in St. James's Protestant Episcopal Church, after which the body was cremated, and the ashes interred in Laurel Hill Cemetery. The American Anthropometric Society received, by the conditions of his will, Dr. Pepper's brain. Among the members of this society were Dr. Joseph Leidy, Phillips Brooks, and Prof. E. D. Cope. The articles of membership of the Anthropometric Society require that each member contribute his brain in the interests of science.

Dr. Pepper's death was followed by many expressions of sorrow from learned societies in various parts of the world. One of the most beautiful tributes was the memorial meeting held in the city of Mexico on September 12th. The leading medical and scientific societies of Mexico assembled in the hall of Congress to do honor to the work and character of Dr. Pepper. President Diaz occupied the chair, and about him were gathered the leading citizens, officials, and scientists of Mexico. Representatives of the National Medical School and the Board of Health eulogized Dr. Pepper, while Hon. Matias Romero spoke of him not as a physician, but as an "altruist who had consecrated himself to doing good for his fellow-men."

In Philadelphia, steps have been taken to erect a substantial memorial to Dr. Pepper. At a memorial meeting, held on March 6th last, a proposition was made to place a statue of the deceased scientist on the City Hall plaza, after the style of the Girard Monument. A committee was appointed with power to raise funds for the proposed statue, the cost not to exceed ten thousand dollars.

* * * * *

One of the letters of William Pengelly, geologist, of Torquay, England, printed in the memoir published by his daughter, gives this sketch of Babbage, the mathematician and inventor of the calculating machine: "I then called on Babbage, and could not get away until after one. He is a splendid talker. He seemed much pleased to see me, and complimented me very much on my lecture (at the Royal Institution), in which he was evidently much interested. He is the most marvelous worker I ever met with. I never saw anything like the evidence of multifarious and vast labor which his 'workshop' presents; he sticks at nothing. One drawer full of riddles, another of epigrams, one of squared words, etc.... It is appalling! And then the downright fun of the fellow; it is almost intoxicating to be with him!"

Correspondence.

"DO ANIMALS REASON?"

DR. EDWARD THORNDIKE'S interesting account, in our August number, of his investigations touching the reasoning power of animals has brought us a large number of letters questioning some of the main conclusions set forth in the article, and criticising the method of the inquiry. Not having room for all these communications, we print one of them, and add extracts from two others. These represent the principal objections urged by the various writers against the conclusions drawn by the author of the article from his experiments.

_Editor Popular Science Monthly:_

SIR: The first reading of Dr. Thorndike's article Do Animals Reason? in the August Popular Science Monthly, gave the impression, which has been deepened by subsequent perusal, that his experiments were not only inadequate to solve the question, but unfairly chosen.

A dog or a cat, utterly hungry, is placed in a box, from which it can escape "by performing some simple (?) action, such as pulling a wire loop, stepping on a platform or lever, clawing down a string, or turning a wooden button."

In the first place, what tends to destroy the reasoning power more than utter hunger? This intense physical craving begets frenzy rather than reason. The more intense this primeval desire, the greater the demand upon primitive instinct for its satisfaction. In the open the cat will jump at a bird, the dog at a bone. If the bird be up a tree, the cat will climb; if the bone be buried, the dog will burrow. Climbing and burrowing are deep-rooted developments of the feline and the canine nature.

Put a dog or a cat, utterly hungry, in a box and hang a piece of meat outside. Instinct prompts a jump through the bars of the box at the meat, and the greater the number of unsuccessful attempts the less the likelihood of the animal with a gnawing stomach sitting down to scrutinize the mechanical construction of the box to the point of perceiving that by stepping on a lever it will open a door. How many millions of years did it take two-legged man to arrive at the perception of the use of the lever? Did the shaggy biped arrive at that perception by sitting down when utterly hungry and looking at a lever; or did he, through countless generations, by some such chance as lifting a stone with a stick, come to the knowledge of weight and fulcrum?

Put an anthropoid ape, some several degrees nearer man in intelligence than a cat, in a modern office elevator that moves by the push of an electric button, suspend the elevator between two stories, and what do you suppose that anthropoid ape will do?

Put a schoolgirl fresh from belles-lettres and matinées in the cab of a locomotive and tell her to run it to the next station. She can not but know that steam will make the wheels go round, but what will she do in the maze of throttles, handles, disks, and rods that confronts her? What will she do if utterly hungry?

Take a laborer from his pick and shovel on the railway embankment and put him at the desk of the general manager. He can read and write. Let the messenger boys and clerks shower him with the letters and telegrams that bombard that desk every day, and let him try to settle the questions to which they give rise.

Now, why can not the schoolgirl run the locomotive, the laborer the railroad? Because the relations of things necessary to the tasks have never been imprinted upon their registering cells; because, in the latter case at least, of the lack of power of co-ordination--that is, the lack of the power of abstract reasoning that the task involves.

Why can not anybody do anything as well as anybody else? Because certain relations have been more deeply impressed upon certain brains than upon others; because of the greater power of certain brains to co-ordinate certain relations, their greater ability to give concrete manifestation of the result of such co-ordination through the efferent nerves. Otherwise any one of us could design a bridge, compose a symphony, or organize a trust.

The oftener relations are impressed upon the registering cells, the more readily are those relations co-ordinated, provided the brain structure be of the requisite caliber. Reiterated impression through the ages of the relations between their needs and surrounding things, together with the development of structural capacity, has led the beaver to build his dam, the bee the honeycomb, the ant its village, the bird its nest. In each case the registered impressions have led to action made possible by long-continued contact between structure and environment; the actions are the result of development that has proceeded mite by mite through unknown time. The brain of neither bird nor beast nor man will immediately co-ordinate radically new impressions received in a radically new environment into coherent action that leads to definite result.

Here is an example within the writer's immediate knowledge: At the age of seventeen a boy entered the service of one of the large railway systems as a clerk in the passenger department. Through eleven years of enthusiastic and concentrated endeavor to master the details of the service he rose to the head of the clerical force--that is, the reiterated impression upon his brain cells of the functions of the passenger service led to that co-ordination which resulted in efficient action. Then he became employed in the office of a large coal-mining company. For several days it was with the utmost difficulty that he could bring his attention to bear upon the new tasks. While seated at the desk in the coal office the old railway problems would chase through his mind; when he began to write the initials of the Pittsburg Consolidated Coal Company, he would find that he had written the initials of the Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway Company; instead of the initials of the Pittsburg, Fairport and Northwestern Dock Company, the initials of the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway Company. The latter initials in each case would appear upon the paper before he knew it, actually without his knowing that he had written them. The entirely unfamiliar routine entailed by the custody of bank accounts, coal leases, deeds and contracts, reports of coal shipments, and the handling of vouchers, became adjusted in his brain bit by bit through many weeks, and it was months before he could co-ordinate the new impressions into broad and well-defined reasoning. If he had been utterly hungry through all the period of the new service, it might have taken years.

Now, what can be expected of a dog or a cat, whose mental processes have been adjusted by inheritance and experience to life in the fields and jungles, when placed in a box, utterly hungry, to study mechanical contrivances? It is manifest that if the brain of a dog or a cat would become adjusted to the radically unfamiliar steps necessary to release it from such a radically unfamiliar environment, that adjustment could only come by extremely slow degrees. Voluntary perception is almost beyond the limits of expectation, and the leading of the animal through the necessary steps would have to be repeated time after time before the impressions upon its brain would reach any degree of permanence, especially as its brain would be lacking in attention, and the repeated handling be an annoyance to it. But that by such tutelage the animals, or a proportion of them, arrived at a knowledge of the means necessary to escape from the box is shown by Dr. Thorndike himself. "If one repeats the process, keeps putting the cat back into the box after each success, the amount of useless action gradually decreases, the right movement is made sooner and sooner, until finally it is done as soon as the cat is put in." But he says: "This sort of a history is not the history of a reasoning animal. It is the history of an animal who meets a certain situation with a lot of instinctive acts.... Little by little the one act becomes more and more likely to be done in that situation, while the others slowly vanish. This history represents the wearing smooth of a path in the brain, not the decisions of a rational consciousness."

Wherein, however, does this differ from the manner in which hundreds of clerks in offices finally learn routine work and mechanically go through the motions necessary to its performance? Do not the actions of thousands of laborers in field and factory seem to proceed from a wearing smooth of a path in the brain, rather than from rational consciousness? Yet they can not be said to be devoid of reason. Is not a great proportion of the daily actions of any one of us gone through from force of habit, almost by instinct?

The word reason does not apply alone to the mental processes of a Helmholtz, but to the co-ordination, however slight, of relations that result in definite action even of a humble organism. Herbert Spencer has clearly shown that instinct and reason differ in degree and not in kind.